We gotta stop this Allentown arena hysteria!

May 04, 2012|Bill White

On the face of it, it was a great idea.

Bring together some of the most knowledgeable proponents and opponents of Allentown's arena project and set them loose for a lively televised discussion, adeptly moderated for WFMZ's "Business Matters" program by host Tony Iannelli. Excellent way to educate the public about the issues involved in this extremely complex, controversial attempt to remake downtown Allentown.

I've been on "Business Matters," as part of a panel discussing the Penn State scandal and child sex abuse. The discussion became a bit heated, but I thought things were reasonably polite and that some good information came out, so I know the format works. Ianelli's very good at this.

Unfortunately, just pulling a panel together for the arena discussion presented problems. The combination of litigation against the project's Neighborhood Improvement Zone financing plan and personal animosity involving some of the show's proposed participants led city officials to decline to appear and led blogger and outspoken opponent Bernie O'Hare to be disinvited.

After a last-minute scramble, the show ended up with Allentown Mayor Ed Pawlowski campaign manager and local union spokesman Mike Fleck and a tag-team of Allentown Neighborhood Improvement Zone Development Authority Chairman Sy Traub and Jeff Barber of Lehigh Financial Group on the pro side, facing off with Lehigh University professor and suburban developer spokesman Stephen Thode and Allentown blogger Mike Molovinsky as the opponents.

Everyone was very polite Thursday as they waited in the lobby, went through makeup and were wired for sound. Then the show began … and all hell broke loose.

You can see this for yourself Monday at 8 p.m. on Channel 69, but in case you miss it, I'll give you my perceptions. The dour Molovinsky would begin complaining, mostly on behalf of displaced downtown merchants — essentially, he's of a mind that downtown Allentown was just fine before and that all this has been disruptive, immoral and unnecessary — and Fleck would interrupt him and begin yelling about how hysterical everyone else is.

Then Thode would wave a prop and offer some preposterously inflated number to explain the insanity of the NIZ and Fleck would begin yelling at him. "You're talking hysteria, and you're getting people out of control!" I don't think either Molovinsky or Thode got a full sentence in without Fleck yelling over them.

I was reminded of the scene in the movie "Old School" where an overwrought Frank the Tank — played by Will Ferrell — screams at his fellow fraternity members, "We can't have anyone freak out out there, OK?! We've gotta keep our composure!" as he's picking up a metal chair and swinging it at a locker.

People! We gotta stop this hysteria! Stop freaking out!

You won't see it on TV, but it was much the same during the commercial breaks. These guys truly were wired.

Actually, Molovinsky remained fairly calm, if in my view misguided. But the real exception was Traub, a gentlemanly lawyer whose brief attempts at rational commentary seemed completely out of place. It made it that much funnier — at least for twisted me, sitting in the peanut gallery — when he was replaced during one of the breaks by fellow supporter Barber, who proceeded to botch things spectacularly by suggesting that by forcing businesses to move and bulldozing their buildings, the project "cured" the city's disease. "We cut the cancer out of Allentown," he said. Very diplomatic.

This, of course, set Molovinsky off, with some justification. He lumped the forced buyouts in with the controversy over changed downtown Allentown bus routes several years ago and concluded, "This was a classist, almost racist move."

I know Iannelli (who is president of the Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce) likes it when his guests mix things up — he announced at the end that this was a great show, which I think he says every week — but even he couldn't have been looking for quite this much heat with so little light. If you believe some of the wild claims Thode was throwing out there, billions of taxpayer dollars will be flowing into the NIZ, PPL will be abandoning its headquarters to move a couple of blocks east and, my personal favorite, "Practically every suburban developer in the Lehigh Valley is likely to go bankrupt."

He forgot the tsunamis and locusts. Hey, it was only a half-hour show.

The bottom line is that anyone expecting to get useful facts from this entertaining program will be sorely disappointed. So let the hysteria continue. But don't freak out!